Online Film Critics Society

The Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) is an international professional association of online film journalists, historians and scholars who publish their work on the World Wide Web. The organization was founded in January 1997 by Harvey Karten, an early online critic who discovered that membership in the New York Film Critics Circle was open only to journalists working for newspapers and magazines.[1] Online critics have generally found it difficult to gain acceptance for their work, and one role of the OFCS is to provide professional recognition to the most productive and successful online critics.[2]

Since 1997, the OFCS has given out annual awards that recognize the best films in about seventeen categories, these awards are noted in the established print media such as Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, and are included in their annual speculation about the ultimate winners of the Academy Awards.[3][4][5]

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Critics whose primary media affiliation is a print publication, or radio or television, are excluded; this criterion distinguishes the OFCS from associations such as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which is responsible for the annual, widely televised Golden Globe Awards. Applicants for membership in the OFCS must have published at least 100 film reviews over at least two years, and are subject to a peer review process to establish the quality of their work.[6] Of hundreds of applications that are received, only a "tiny number" are accepted;[7] in 2014, there were about 270 members.[8]

^"Harvey S. Karten". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2014-10-03. When my application for membership in the New York Film Critics Circle was circular-filed (print media only, sorry), I founded the Online Film Critics Society in January 1997 and three years later, NYFCO (New York Film Critics Online).

^Feinberg, Scott (January 30, 2012). "SAG Awards Confirm Tremendous Support for 'The Help' -- and 'The Artist' (Analysis)". The Hollywood Reporter. This awards season, Plummer has won virtually every major Oscar-precursor best supporting actor award that there is to win: the National Board of Review Award, the Los Angeles Film Critics Circle Award, the Online Film Critics Society Award, the Critics' Choice Award, the Golden Globe Award, and now the Screen Actors Guild Award.

1.
World Wide Web
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The World Wide Web is an information space where documents and other web resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators, interlinked by hypertext links, and can be accessed via the Internet. English scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 and he wrote the first web browser computer program in 1990 while employed at CERN in Switzerland. The Web browser was released outside of CERN in 1991, first to research institutions starting in January 1991. The World Wide Web has been central to the development of the Information Age and is the primary tool billions of people use to interact on the Internet, Web pages are primarily text documents formatted and annotated with Hypertext Markup Language. In addition to formatted text, web pages may contain images, video, audio, embedded hyperlinks permit users to navigate between web pages. Multiple web pages with a theme, a common domain name. Website content can largely be provided by the publisher, or interactive where users contribute content or the content depends upon the user or their actions, websites may be mostly informative, primarily for entertainment, or largely for commercial, governmental, or non-governmental organisational purposes. In the 2006 Great British Design Quest organised by the BBC and the Design Museum, Tim Berners-Lees vision of a global hyperlinked information system became a possibility by the second half of the 1980s. By 1985, the global Internet began to proliferate in Europe, in 1988 the first direct IP connection between Europe and North America was made and Berners-Lee began to openly discuss the possibility of a web-like system at CERN. Such a system, he explained, could be referred to using one of the meanings of the word hypertext. At this point HTML and HTTP had already been in development for two months and the first Web server was about a month from completing its first successful test. While the read-only goal was met, accessible authorship of web content took longer to mature, with the concept, WebDAV, blogs, Web 2.0. The proposal was modelled after the SGML reader Dynatext by Electronic Book Technology, a NeXT Computer was used by Berners-Lee as the worlds first web server and also to write the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, in 1990. By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the necessary for a working Web, the first web browser. The first web site, which described the project itself, was published on 20 December 1990, jones stored it on a magneto-optical drive and on his NeXT computer. On 6 August 1991, Berners-Lee published a summary of the World Wide Web project on the newsgroup alt. hypertext. This date is confused with the public availability of the first web servers. The first server outside Europe was installed at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Palo Alto, California, accounts differ substantially as to the date of this event

2.
Variety (magazine)
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Variety is a weekly American entertainment trade magazine and website owned by Penske Media Corporation. The last daily printed edition was put out on March 19,2013, Variety originally reported on theater and vaudeville. Variety has been published since December 16,1905, when it was launched by Sime Silverman as a weekly periodical covering vaudeville with its headquarters in New York City, on January 19,1907, Variety published what is considered the first film review in history. In 1933, Sime Silverman launched Daily Variety, based in Hollywood, Sime Silverman had passed on the editorship of the Weekly Variety to Abel Green as his replacement in 1931, he remained as publisher until his death in 1933 soon after launching the Daily. His son Sidne Silverman, known as Skigie, succeeded him as publisher of both publications, both Sidne and his wife, stage actress Marie Saxon, died of tuberculosis. Their only son Syd Silverman, born 1932, was the heir to what was then Variety Inc. Young Syds legal guardian Harold Erichs oversaw Variety Inc. until 1956, after that date Syd Silverman was publisher of both the Weekly Variety in New York and the Daily Variety in Hollywood, until the sale of both papers in 1987 to the Cahners Corp. In L. A. the Daily was edited by Tom Pryor from 1959 until 1988, for twenty years its editor-in-chief was Peter Bart, originally only of the weekly New York edition, with Michael Silverman running the Daily in Hollywood. Bart had worked previously at Paramount Pictures and The New York Times, in April 2009, Bart moved to the position of vice president and editorial director, characterized online as Boffo No More, Bart Up and Out at Variety. From mid 2009 to 2013, Timothy M. Gray oversaw the publication as Editor-in-Chief, after over 30 years of various reporter, in October 2014, Eller and Wallenstein were upped to Co-Editors in Chief, with Littleton continuing to oversee the trades television coverage. This dissemination comes in the form of columns, news stories, images, video, Cahners Publishing purchased Variety from the Silverman family in 1987. On December 7,1988, Barts predecessor, Roger Watkins, proposed, upon its launch, the new-look Variety measured one inch shorter with a washed-out color on the front. In October 2012, Reed Business Information, the periodicals owner, PMC is the owner of Deadline. com, which since the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike has been considered Varietys largest competitor in online showbiz news. In October,2012, Jay Penske announced that the paywall would come down, the print publication would stay. A significant portion of the advertising revenue comes during the film-award season leading up to the Academy Awards. During this Awards Season, large numbers of colorful, full-page For Your Consideration advertisements inflate the size of Variety to double or triple its usual page count, paid circulation for the weekly Variety magazine in 2013 was 40,000. Each copy of each Variety issue is read by an average of three people, with a total readership of 120,000. Variety. com has 17 million unique monthly visitors, Variety is a weekly entertainment publication with a broad coverage of movies, television, theater, music and technology, written for entertainment executives

3.
The Hollywood Reporter
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Headquartered in Los Angeles, THR is part of the Hollywood Reporter-Billboard Media Group, a group of properties that includes Billboard and SpinMedia. It is owned by Eldridge Industries, a company owned by an executive of its previous owner. Under Janice Min, a faltering THR was relaunched in 2010 as a weekly print magazine with a revamped, continuously updated website, as well as mobile. THR was founded in 1930 by William R, billy Wilkerson as Hollywoods first daily entertainment trade newspaper. The first edition appeared on September 3,1930, and featured Wilkersons front-page Tradeviews column, the newspaper appeared Monday to Saturday for the first 10 years, except for a brief period, then Monday to Friday from 1940. Wilkerson ran the THR until his death in September 1962, although his final column appeared 18 months prior, from the late 1930s, Wilkerson used THR to push the view that the industry was a communist stronghold. In particular, he opposed the screenplay writers trade union, the Screen Writers Guild, in 1946 the Guild considered creating an American Authors Authority to hold copyright for writers, instead of ownership passing to the studios. Wilkerson devoted his Tradeviews column to the issue on July 29,1946 and he went to confession before publishing it, knowing the damage it would cause, but was apparently encouraged by the priest to go ahead with it. The column contained the first industry names, including Dalton Trumbo and Howard Koch, on became the Hollywood blacklist. Eight of the 11 people Wilkerson named were among the Hollywood Ten who were blacklisted after hearings in 1947 by the House Un-American Activities Committee. In 1997 THR reporter David Robb wrote a story about the newspapers involvement, for the blacklists 65th anniversary in 2012, the THR published a lengthy investigative piece about Wilkersons role, by reporters Gary Baum and Daniel Miller. The same edition carried an apology from Wilkersons son, W. R. Wilkerson III and he wrote that his father had been motivated by revenge for his thwarted ambition to own a studio. Wilkersons wife, Tichi Wilkerson Kassel, took over as publisher and she sold the paper on April 11,1988, to Affiliated Publications, parent company of Billboard Publications, for $26.7 million. Robert J. Dowling became THR president in 1988 and editor-in-chief, Dowling brought in Alex Ben Block as editor in 1990, and editorial quality of both news and specials steadily improved. Block and Teri Ritzer dampened much of the coverage and cronyism that had infected the paper under Wilkerson. After Block left, former editor at Variety, Anita Busch, was brought in as editor between 1999 and 2001. Busch was credited with making the paper competitive with Variety, tony Uphoff assumed the publisher position in November 2005. Uphoff was replaced in October 2006 by John Kilcullen, the publisher of Billboard, Kilcullen was a defendant in Billboards infamous dildo lawsuit, in which he was accused of race discrimination and sexual harassment

4.
Academy Awards
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The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette, officially called the Academy Award of Merit, which has become commonly known by its nickname Oscar. The awards, first presented in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, are overseen by AMPAS, the awards ceremony was first broadcast on radio in 1930 and televised for the first time in 1953. It is now live in more than 200 countries and can be streamed live online. The Academy Awards ceremony is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony and its equivalents – the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music and recording – are modeled after the Academy Awards. The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best films of 2016, were held on February 26,2017, at the Dolby Theatre, in Los Angeles, the ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and was broadcast on ABC. A total of 3,048 Oscars have been awarded from the inception of the award through the 88th, the first Academy Awards presentation was held on May 16,1929, at a private dinner function at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 270 people. The post-awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel, the cost of guest tickets for that nights ceremony was $5. Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other participants in the industry of the time. The ceremony ran for 15 minutes, winners were announced to media three months earlier, however, that was changed for the second ceremony in 1930. Since then, for the rest of the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11,00 pm on the night of the awards. The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performances in The Last Command and he had to return to Europe before the ceremony, so the Academy agreed to give him the prize earlier, this made him the first Academy Award winner in history. With the fourth ceremony, however, the system changed, for the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned two calendar years. At the 29th ceremony, held on March 27,1957, until then, foreign-language films had been honored with the Special Achievement Award. The 74th Academy Awards, held in 2002, presented the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, since 1973, all Academy Awards ceremonies always end with the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Academy also awards Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, see also § Awards of Merit categories The best known award is the Academy Award of Merit, more popularly known as the Oscar statuette. The five spokes represent the branches of the Academy, Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers. The model for the statuette is said to be Mexican actor Emilio El Indio Fernández, sculptor George Stanley sculpted Cedric Gibbons design. The statuettes presented at the ceremonies were gold-plated solid bronze

5.
Hollywood Foreign Press Association
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The HFPA consists of about 90 members from approximately 55 countries with a combined following of more than 250 million. It conducts the annual Golden Globe Awards ceremony in Los Angeles every January that honor notable examples of cinema and television, the association was founded in 1943, by Los Angeles-based foreign journalists who wanted a more organized distributing process of cinema news to non-U. S. The first Golden Globes awardees were for the industry in early 1944 with a ceremony at 20th Century Fox. There, Jennifer Jones was awarded Best Actress honors for The Song of Bernadette which also won for Best Film, Awards were presented in the form of scrolls. The following year came up with the idea of presenting winners with a golden globe encircled with a strip of motion picture film. The separation ended in 1955 when the journalists reunited under the collective title The Hollywood Foreign Press Association with firm guidelines, in 1955, the Golden Globes began honoring achievements in television as well as in film. The first honorees in the Best Television Show category that year were Dinah Shore, Lucy & Desi, The American Comedy, membership meetings are held monthly, and the officers and directors are elected annually. A maximum of five journalists may be admitted to the each year. S. A. The HFPA does not release a list of publications for those articles. The HFPA is a organization that donates funds to entertainment-related charities. The Golden Globe Awards brings in about $10 million from its television broadcast each year, the HFPA hosts an annual Grants Banquet to distribute funds, $2.1 million was donated to non-profits in 2015. According to the HFPA, since 1990 more than $23.9 million has been donated to charity and used to fund scholarships, funds have also been used to restore more than 90 films, including King Kong and Woman on the Run. Official website Hollywood Foreign Press Association at the Internet Movie Database

6.
Golden Globe Award
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Golden Globe Awards are accolades bestowed by the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, recognizing excellence in film and television, both domestic and foreign. The annual ceremony at which the awards are presented is a part of the film industrys awards season. The 74th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film, the 1st Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best achievements in 1943 filmmaking, was held in January 1944, at the 20th Century-Fox studios. Subsequent ceremonies were held at venues throughout the next decade, including the Beverly Hills Hotel. In 1950, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association made the decision to establish an honorary award to recognize outstanding contributions to the entertainment industry. Recognizing its subject as a figure within the entertainment industry. The official name of the award became the Cecil B. In 1963, the Miss Golden Globe concept was introduced, in its inaugural year, two Miss Golden Globes were named, one for film and one for television. The two Miss Golden Globes named that year were Eva Six and Donna Douglas, respectively, in 2009, the Golden Globe statuette was redesigned. It was unveiled at a conference at the Beverly Hilton prior to the show. The broadcast of the Golden Globe Awards, telecast to 167 countries worldwide, generally ranks as the third most-watched awards show each year, behind only the Oscars, gervais returned to host the 68th and 69th Golden Globe Awards the next two years. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosted the 70th, 71st and 72nd Golden Globe Awards in 2015, the Golden Globe Awards theme song, which debuted in 2012, was written by Japanese musician and songwriter Yoshiki Hayashi. On January 7,2008, it was announced due to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. The ceremony was faced with a threat by striking writers to picket the event, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was forced to adopt another approach for the broadcast. In acting categories, Meryl Streep holds the record for the most competitive Golden Globe wins with eight, however, including honorary awards, such as the Henrietta Award, World Film Favorite Actor/Actress Award, or Cecil B. DeMille Award, Barbra Streisand leads with nine, additionally, Streisand won for composing the song Evergreen, producing the Best Picture, and directing Yentl in 1984. Jack Nicholson, Angela Lansbury, Alan Alda and Shirley MacLaine have six awards each, behind them are Rosalind Russell and Jessica Lange with five wins. Meryl Streep also holds the record for most nominations with thirty, at the 46th Golden Globe Awards an anomaly occurred, a three way-tie for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama

7.
Website
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A website is a collection of related web pages, including multimedia content, typically identified with a common domain name, and published on at least one web server. A website may be accessible via a public Internet Protocol network, such as the Internet, or a local area network. Websites have many functions and can be used in various fashions, a website can be a website, a commercial website for a company. Websites are typically dedicated to a topic or purpose, ranging from entertainment and social networking to providing news. All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web, while private websites, Web pages, which are the building blocks of websites, are documents, typically composed in plain text interspersed with formatting instructions of Hypertext Markup Language. They may incorporate elements from other websites with suitable markup anchors, Web pages are accessed and transported with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, which may optionally employ encryption to provide security and privacy for the user. The users application, often a web browser, renders the page content according to its HTML markup instructions onto a display terminal. Hyperlinking between web pages conveys to the reader the site structure and guides the navigation of the site, Some websites require user registration or subscription to access content. As of 2016 end users can access websites on a range of devices, including desktop and laptop computers, tablet computers, smartphones, the World Wide Web was created in 1990 by the British CERN physicist Tim Berners-Lee. On 30 April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to use for anyone, before the introduction of HTML and HTTP, other protocols such as File Transfer Protocol and the gopher protocol were used to retrieve individual files from a server. These protocols offer a directory structure which the user navigates and chooses files to download. Documents were most often presented as text files without formatting. Websites have many functions and can be used in various fashions, a website can be a website, a commercial website. Websites can be the work of an individual, a business or other organization, any website can contain a hyperlink to any other website, so the distinction between individual sites, as perceived by the user, can be blurred. Websites are written in, or converted to, HTML and are accessed using a software interface classified as a user agent. Web pages can be viewed or otherwise accessed from a range of computer-based and Internet-enabled devices of various sizes, including computers, laptops, PDAs. A website is hosted on a system known as a web server. These terms can refer to the software that runs on these systems which retrieves

8.
Film Threat
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It first appeared as a photocopied zine in 1985, created by Wayne State University students Chris Gore and André Seewood. In 1997, Film Threat was converted to an online resource. The first initial issues of Film Threat combined pseudo-political ranting by Seewood and cinematic material, in Gore’s own words, I thought, Wouldn’t it be great to start a punk rock-attitude movie magazine—and then, the people from this magazine would eventually go off and make films. In issue 9, Film Threat became a magazine, and it was also around this time that Seewood left the project to pursue independent filmmaking. Film Threat would eventually find a new home with Larry Flynt Publications, relaunching in November,1991 as Volume 2, I darted to the newsstand to grab the first glossy edition of what promised to be the turning of the tide for Let’s-Blow-and-Stroke-the-Interviewee type film journalism. And whose face did I see, macaulay Culkin’s, stated filmmaker Kevin Smith of the first issue of Film Threat’s new edition. In 1993, the magazine—then published bi-monthly—had a circulation of 125,000, paul Zimmerman became executive editor in 1994, and the magazine continued to grow, but Film Threats tenure with Larry Flynt Publications ended after 28 issues in June 1996. Gore managed to buy back the rights from LFP, and launched the magazine, for a third time and he would print only two issues, however, before retiring the magazine in 1997. Gore launched Film Threat as a website in 1996, at first a sparse collection of film news, FilmThreat. com grew, covering both the indie and mainstream equally. Chris Gore was succeeded as editor of the website by Ron Wells, over the course of 2009, the site was edited by Don R. Lewis and Matthew Sorrento, before a brief hiatus where the site went offline in December 2009. On May 11,2011, Film Threat announced that it planned to produce a print and e-book edition beginning in September 2011. In 2011, Film Threat instituted a for-profit unsolicited submission service charging independent filmmakers a fee who wish to have their work reviewed by the site, however, Film Threat still reviewed select films that are part of the sites regular coverage for free. In late August 2016, Chris Gore started another Kickstarter campaign in order to save/re-vamp the website with a more modest goal of $37,500, the campaign brought in $56,199 On February 6,2017, the Film Threat website was relaunched. A relaunch party celebrating the return was held in Los Angeles on January 14,2017 at The Berrics

9.
IMDb
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In 1998 it became a subsidiary of Amazon Inc, who were then able to use it as an advertising resource for selling DVDs and videotapes. As of January 2017, IMDb has approximately 4.1 million titles and 7.7 million personalities in its database, the site enables registered users to submit new material and edits to existing entries. Although all data is checked before going live, the system has open to abuse. The site also featured message boards which stimulate regular debates and dialogue among authenticated users, IMDb shutdown the message boards permanently on February 20,2017. Anyone with a connection can read the movie and talent pages of IMDb. A registration process is however, to contribute info to the site. A registered user chooses a name for themselves, and is given a profile page. These badges range from total contributions made, to independent categories such as photos, trivia, bios, if a registered user or visitor happens to be in the entertainment industry, and has an IMDb page, that user/visitor can add photos to that page by enrolling in IMDbPRO. Actors, crew, and industry executives can post their own resume and this fee enrolls them in a membership called IMDbPro. PRO can be accessed by anyone willing to pay the fee, which is $19.99 USD per month, or if paid annually, $149.99, which comes to approximately $12.50 per month USD. Membership enables a user to access the rank order of each industry personality, as well as agent contact information for any actor, producer, director etc. that has an IMDb page. Enrolling in PRO for industry personnel, enables those members the ability to upload a head shot to open their page, as well as the ability to upload hundreds of photos to accompany their page. Anyone can register as a user, and contribute to the site as well as enjoy its content, however those users enrolled in PRO have greater access and privileges. IMDb originated with a Usenet posting by British film fan and computer programmer Col Needham entitled Those Eyes, others with similar interests soon responded with additions or different lists of their own. Needham subsequently started an Actors List, while Dave Knight began a Directors List, and Andy Krieg took over THE LIST from Hank Driskill, which would later be renamed the Actress List. Both lists had been restricted to people who were alive and working, the goal of the participants now was to make the lists as inclusive as possible. By late 1990, the lists included almost 10,000 movies and television series correlated with actors and actresses appearing therein. On October 17,1990, Needham developed and posted a collection of Unix shell scripts which could be used to search the four lists, at the time, it was known as the rec. arts. movies movie database